


What Hides in the Depths

by Rhinozilla



Category: Jak and Daxter
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 14:53:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16348802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinozilla/pseuds/Rhinozilla
Summary: In this unfamiliar future, Jak and Daxter encounter an old familiar enemy in the depths of the bay near the pumping station.





	What Hides in the Depths

“How many times have we saved this city, and they still give us the crappy missions!” Daxter whined, pressing his face to the front window of the Titan Suit.

Their latest assignment had Jak and Daxter out at the pumping station, installing new pipes to replace an underwater segment damaged by the Metalheads. They had been tediously shifting and maneuvering the heavy steel assemblies for two hours now. It was made worse by the frequent need to replenish their air supply at the nearby oxygen port. Fortunately Keira had modified the suit to extend their air supply capacity to nearly fifteen minutes, but it was still frustrating having to stop and start so often.

It didn’t help that Daxter’s chattering seemed to be using their oxygen more quickly than usual.

“At least we aren’t in the sewer,” Jak grumbled. “Or the city.”

“Yeesh, you might be right about that,” Daxter snorted. “That place has been even more of a dump since they started rebuilding it. What a mess!”

Jak didn’t respond immediately, focusing on aligning the new pipe section with the existing structure. The Titan Suit’s controls were crude but effective, and unfortunately pushing the controls harder did not magically make the suit’s arms more forceful. All it did was make the sides of his hands sore from tying. With a sluggish shove and a groan, the pipe slid into place, and he used the Titan’s claws to wiggle it a bit to make sure it was secure. Another team would be coming out later to weld everything down. He didn’t envy them that job.

“Sometimes it’s better to tear down the old and start fresh,” he finally replied.

He could practically hear Daxter rolling his eyes.

“Oh, don’t get deep on me, buddy. If you ask me, bullet holes in the walls and crumbling buildings ain’t my idea of progress.”

Jak shook his head, pausing when the quick beep of a proximity alert started going off on the left side panel of the control board.

“Look at the old water slums,” Daxter went on, not appearing to notice. “They’ve been demolishing it for, what, a week now? I think it’s dead by now, sheesh—“

“Daxter, shut up,” Jak snapped, squinting through the glass to see what was incoming.

Daxter picked up on his tone and also turned toward the side, trying to see what the proximity alert was picking up. The alert grew more urgent, and Jak started to turn the suit to face the threat head on. He saw the outline of the thing a second after he could have done anything about it.

“Lurker shark!” Daxter screamed anyway, involuntarily popping away from the glass and leaping back onto Jak’s shoulder inside the cockpit.

Jak yanked up both arms of the Titan Suit, lurching them forward to take the offensive. The massive shark was a shadow of orange, yellow, and grey. Its jaws stretched open, capable of swallowing the suit in two bites if it was so inclined…and it looked so inclined. A familiar, bottomless fear dragged his stomach down to the floor, and he could hear his heartbeat violently ratcheting up his throat.

The shark dove to the left at the last second, avoiding the hasty attack. Jak swore as he started to bring the arms down to defend. The suit’s mechanisms were not as quick as his own reflexes, and the weight of the surrounding water slowed them down considerably. The shark impacted the left leg of the suit, forcing the inverted knee to bend and the suit to list immediately to the side.

Metal screeched, and he distinctly heard something get knocked loose, followed by a hiss of gas gushing out of a punctured tube. A damage alert started beeping.

“Was that the oxygen? Did that bastard just rip out our oxygen?!” Daxter yelled.

Jak didn’t have time to tell Daxter that their oxygen supply wasn’t routed through the legs, that the steam coming out of the damaged pipe looked like one of their hydraulic lines. Which meant that the left leg was all but useless. He tested the controls and…yeah…yeah the left leg was completely crippled.

“It’s coming back!” Daxter pointed, just as the proximity alert fired up again.

This time, Jak didn’t waste time looking for himself. He gripped one of the damaged pipes that he had removed from the pump assembly. The weight of it threatened to compromise the balance of the suit on one leg, and Jak activated the left side boosters. The burst of energy from the vents swung the left side of the suit around, and with it, the pipe.

Jak yelled out as he swing the pipe around like a bat. The impact that it made with the side of the lurker shark was solid, and there was a satisfying crunch. The shark roared, exposing rows of sharp, gleaming, yellow teeth. He released the pipe before the force of the swing took the suit off its one good foot. The pipe hit the sediment floor of the bay and kicked up a smoky grey curtain of sand and dirt.

“Let’s get outta here! This thing doesn’t have weapons!” Daxter crawled down Jak’s arm and did a lightning fast run down of the entire control panel, assessing for himself and confirming loudly that, again, the Titan Suit was not equipped with weapons.

Inky black was leeching into the murky water around them, painting a trail toward the shark, and Jak hit the overhead lights on the suit. Two vibrant beams of light burst forward, illuminating—and hopefully blinding—the creature.

The beast was definitely a lurker shark, the same that had tormented them back at Sandover when they dared to swim out too far, but the passage of time had been ugly to the species. Patches of grey and poisonous purple forked across its normal orange and yellow scales. Tumorous bulges distended unnaturally from its fins and around its gills, in what he guessed were pockets of dark eco or whatever else the Baron had been dumping into the ocean.

This new, mutated shark did not move as quickly as what he remembered, but it made up for it with the malicious way that it lurched toward them for a second attack. This time, Jak was ready, and he pulled at the controls for the arms. The mechanized limbs rushed up and outward, extending its pronged claws and making a sickening impact directly into the shark’s incoming headbutt.

The shark’s face practically went concave, and more glistening black blood burst out of the new wounds. The monster’s cry of pain faded quickly, and the body turned to dead weight, carried only by momentum into the front window of the Titan Suit.

“Ew, turn on the wipers!” Daxter waved his arms back and forth, imitating the motion.

Jak grimaced and used the arms to shove the body aside. As the mass cleared their visual, they didn’t even have a second to react before a second lurker shark filled their window view, successfully closing its jaws around the right shoulder of the suit.

The power lights inside the suit flickered, and Jak sensed more than saw that the entire right arm had gone cold. He swung the left arm up and drove the claws of it into the side of the shark. He’d been aiming for the gills, for something vital that would dislodge the beast, but hit only meaty flank. Unaffected, the shark closed its jaws further, and electricity jumped out of the open wound on the suit’s right shoulder, burning the shark’s mouth and causing sparks to fly inside the cockpit near the impact point.

“Dammit.” Jak released the right arm controls, reaching across his body to activate the side boosters again.

They sputtered and then kicked on, throwing the suit to the right side, driving the suit, with the lurker shark attached, into a rocky formation near the oxygen port. The shark released the shoulder with a pained yelp, dragging its upper jaw downward across the belly of the suit. Teeth screamed across the glass, and a cloud of bubbles and torn tubbing danced across their field of vision.

“THAT was our oxygen,” Jak barked. “Son of a bitch…”

The blue interior lights flashed to red, indicating their compromised air supply.

“We can get to the port,” Daxter was yammering. “If we can get to the oxygen port, then we…Well, then we can die some other way, but I don’t wanna suffocate at least!”

Jak sneered and got eyes on the lurker shark again. The monster was doubling around, preparing for a second strike. Anger bubbled up in his chest, and he welcomed it. Fear was a paralytic, but anger was a familiar motivator. He turned on all of the forward facing exterior lights, doubling the power of the light blasting out toward the shark. The shark’s trajectory wavered a bit, unable to aim properly at target that it couldn’t see.

He pushed the lever activating the boosters on the front of the suit, blasting them backwards away from the shark and toward the oxygen port. The suit groaned in protest, the dead weight of the left leg dragging on the ground slowing them. The cracked glass of the front window creaked as the suit slammed onto the oxygen port. Cool, damp air gushed into the cockpit as it refilled, but there wasn’t time to appreciate it.

The lurker shark made contact directly with the front window, and a spider web of cracks branched out from the point of impact. The suit tilted backwards, and Jak gasped as their center of gravity shifted. The suit helplessly toppled backwards under the assault, unable to stabilize on one leg and with only one arm to catch itself.

The surface of the water rippled nearly twenty feet above them.

“Jak?!” Daxter’s voice managed to go up two octaves with that one syllable.

Jak didn’t have to wonder about his friend’s panic. Water was dribbling into the cockpit, splattering onto his chest from the bowing cracks in the glass front window.

“Great, so instead of suffocating, we’re gonna drown! And if we don’t drown, we’re gonna get eaten by that freaky lurker!” Daxter cried, even as he rummaged into Jak’s bag and dug out his gun, shoving it into Jak’s hands.

Jak immediately took the weapon, arranging it into the Peace Maker mod. If they only had one shot at this, then they’d better make it count. He exchanged one confirmation look with Daxter, and then lifted the gun barrel toward the compromised glass.

“Hold on, Dax,” he grunted, seeing the lurker shark angling to make a final assault on the front of the suit.

Daxter didn’t need telling twice. He slipped down the front of Jak’s tunic, wedging himself between Jak’s chest and the eco ring, which securely pinned him in place. Regardless, Jak felt Daxter’s claws involuntarily dig into his ribs.

The shark was getting closer, jaws opening wide and teeth reflecting the dying light of the suit’s forward lamps. At the last second, Jak reached up and yanked his goggles down over his eyes. He retrained his aim on the shark through the fractured web of glass…paused for a final moment, and then fired.

The glass exploded outward in a sheet as the energy burst from the Peace Maker punched its way through. Water immediately shoved the shards of glass back into the cockpit. What was water and what was glass, Jak couldn’t register, because the force of the wall of water knocked all of the air out of his body. He fought the surge of panic that dumped into his veins, urging him to kick and thrash and claw his way out. The water filled the space quickly, and equilibrium voided the weight of the water that had shoved him back into his seat.

The purple explosion from the Peace Maker met the lurker shark face on, or that was what he guessed, seeing as the corpse hanging into the water didn’t have much of a skull left.

Jak scrambled up out of the demolished suit, bending his knees and bracing his feet against the outer cage of the cockpit. He shoved up off of the suit, clawing for the surface that was twenty feet away…fifteen…ten…five…

He broke the surface with a desperate gulp for air. A combination of oxygen and water crashed into his mouth, and he momentarily sank below the water line again, momentarily flailing for purchase. Re-orienting himself, he angled toward the wall of pipes that rose up from the deep and reached up to a platform nearly forty feet above them.

Ugh, too far.

He kept an adrenaline-fueled hold of the gun as he swam to the piping structure. He shoved the gun up out of the water and onto the wide flat top of the nearest pipe. He reached up and grabbed some of the smaller pipes to haul himself out. He coughed and sputtered, his body trying to expel water and drag in air at the same time and failing at both.

Mindful of Daxter pinned to his chest, he avoided toppling forward on his face, instead turning and flopping onto his back on the grimy steel. He felt Daxter squirm, and he deflated in relief. A fuzzy orange head poked out of the neck of his shirt.

“Holy SHIT, whose idea was that?!” Daxter was also choking on water and air, but that didn’t slow him down as he complained.

He dragged himself out of Jak’s shirt, rolling to his seat on the large pipe and leaning back against Jak’s side as they both heaved for air.

“We…didn’t…drown…” Jak panted. “At least.” He offered a thumbs up inside Daxter’s peripheral vision.

“You just—“ Daxter raised a hand, sighed, and let it drop. “You aren’t wrong…but you are bleeding.”

Jak disinterestedly noted the red lines over the bare skin of his neck, face, and hands where the glass had been slammed into him. He waved off Daxter’s fretting, already coming down hard off the adrenaline high. Daxter insisted on cracking open a health pack, and Jak didn’t have enough left to tell him not to. It must have been worse than he thought, because the relief brought on by the health pack was much more intense than he’d expected and left him feeling light.

After a few minutes of just breathing, he finally dragged himself up into a sitting position and looked out across the harbor. Daxter grumbled as he took his perch at Jak’s shoulder, taking the time now to try and wring the water out of his fur.

“Tess is gonna have our asses,” Daxter remarked, jumping down and poking at the soaked Peace Maker.

“She’s just gonna have to get in line,” Jak mumbled, looking out across the deceptively placid water.

Bubbles were still churning the water occasionally above where the ruined Titan Suit lay, but farther out, the water looked like glass. The two lurker shark corpses had not floated to the surface yet, and he grimaced. He didn’t want to be here when they did. He’d hated those things when they were kids. But seeing the way that this place had twisted and mutated the sharks…the way this world had done to so many other things from Sandover…dampened that hatred to something more melancholy.

He stewed in that heavy silence for a minute, unsure how to drag himself out of it, the way Daxter usually did for him.

As if on cue…

“So…which one of us is telling Tattooed Wonder that we tanked one of his Titan Suits?”


End file.
